


you can do without - me.

by navree



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Boarding School, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Murder, Obsessive Behavior, Stalking, Unrequited Crush, and i wanna SCREAM, and it's very toxic he's horrible and unhealthy, anyway time to make it gay and toxic, like consider this your trigger warning for literally anything you can think of, sometimes i think about how this season was bret easton ellis/donna tartt fanfic, when i am a good one, why is ras such a bad writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23403808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navree/pseuds/navree
Summary: Unspecial like him, like his writing, like this story that he can't get out of his mind.It's not fair, how he's everything Bret isn't and can never be and yet he wants so badly.
Relationships: Jughead Jones/Bret Weston Wallis, Jughead Jones/Veronica Lodge
Comments: 3
Kudos: 55





	you can do without - me.

**Author's Note:**

> for hitler-has-a-foot-fetish on tumblr from [here](https://navree.tumblr.com/post/614039046869630976/im-so-so-bored-with-all-this-corona-quarantine-so)! this went kinda off the rails, and also i'm sorry if this is nonsensical i have not watched a single episode of season 4 and i'm not incorporating anything from that into this because i don't want to  
> as always, comments (either positive or constructive) are always welcome and much appreciated!

Meeting the new kid and his blonde slip of a girlfriend, Bret forms one overarching opinion - Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third is thoroughly and completely unimpressive. Tall, lanky, dark haired and beanie clad, with his ridiculous layers and horrible gang jacket, he's everything Bret hates and then some. And what, because he wrote some sad sack book about some richie rich in his pathetic little town, he gets to come here? He gets to entire Bret's home, Bret's kingdom, like he's some kind of invading parasite. Like he's welcome here. 

"I look forward to seeing you around," he says jovially, shaking his hand. Long fingered hand. A writer's hand. He can picture it, clutching a pen. 

Donna says, _Look him up_. Bret says, _Yes Donna_. Donna says, _Find out what you can about him_. Bret says, _Yes Donna_. Donna asks, _Do you think he's better than us?_ Bret says, _No Donna_. 

Bret Weston Wallis, yes yes yes, perpetual yes man. 

His eyes burn. He reads and he read and he reads. He reads about the sticky maple that killed its heir; he reads about the snakes that slither across his life; he reads about the good man who suffers and the good father who gave his son his morality; he reads about the monster whose daughter he loves; he reads about the killer whose daughter holds his hand. He lives with the dead and fears for the living. Bret's eyes sting and he feels like he knows them, broad shouldered Archie Andrews and blond ponytailed Betty Cooper and incandescent Veronica Lodge. The prose is unspecial, Bret repeats it to himself over and over, trite and overdone at times, but he's sucked in, sucked into Jughead's mind. 

Jughead Jones. It's such a dumb name. Unspecial. Unspecial like him, like his writing, like this story that he can't get out of his mind. It's unspecial and his father told him not to waste time on anything unspecial, what's the point of examining the mediocre when he is great, his writing is great. 

The clock blinks 3:15am. 

Jonathan finds him asleep, curled protectively around his laptop. 

Their first workshop, Bret tears his work to pieces. He scratches and claws and rips and shreds and everyone nods and agrees and smile back when he grins at them, the ink blood of Jones's work staining his teeth. And Jones just sitting there, skinny arms folded across his scrawny chest and smirking like it doesn't phase him. Bret once reduced Joan to tears with his critiques. Jones should be shrinking away from him like this is about to come to blows.

Chipping puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him it's enough and they move on. 

Later, Bret's packing up his book when Jones actually walks up and talks to him. 

"That bit you said about run on sentences," he says, like they're friends, like he's allowed to make conversation with him. "That was good advice, thank you." Bret wants to say, _I know it was_. Bret wants to say, _Stop talking to me_. Bret wants to say, _Shut the fuck up_.

"No problem Jones," he tells him. 

"Don't call me Jones." It still sounds friendly, but with an edge. "I'm not gonna be calling you Weston Wallis." Bret opens his mouth but all he gets is a clap on the shoulder and he's left alone, clutching his bag. 

His mouth feels dry and his chest is on fire. 

He sneaks into Donna's room that night and fucks her so hard they knock a picture frame off the wall. Maybe she comes, maybe she doesn't, it doesn't matter. Because he doesn't. 

He sees Forsythe **_(_** he won't call him Jughead Jughead is crass and lowlife but he told him not to call him Jones he _told_ him so he won't **_)_** in the showers at the dorms the next morning, a towel around his waist, and. 

Teenage boys get morning wood all the time it's as unspecial as his new classmate. 

He runs laps around the track to prep for football season. It's cold and his lungs burn and his eyes tear and it feels so good, the ache and sting feels so good. _No pain no gain, Bret. No pain. No gain._

Forsythe starts showing up, wrapped in a scarf and with his laptop, staring out at the trees and tapping away. Bret runs fast, he runs faster to outrun him, to outrun the speed of his fingers. 

But this track is a circle, this track is a circle and time is a circle and his dark, dark eyes are circles and Bret can't outrun circles, not on a circle. But he runs and runs and runs until he can't breathe, until his head spins and he has to stop. He falls to his knees in the synthetic grass and heaves gasps. It's so cold and wet, everything feels so cold and wet. There are eyes on him and Bret doesn't look for anyone's, certainly not- 

Not those. Someone tries to help him to his feet, a freshman maybe, and Bret breaks his nose and he decks him. 

They don't even suspend him, and Bret isn't thinking about whether or not Forsythe saw. 

Forsythe critiques his work. Not harshly, not unnecessarily, matter of fact. Like Bret is a specimen to dissect. For a moment, he sees red. 

Something snaps in him. 

"Thanks, Forsythe," he says, calm, and flashes him a winsome smile. Forsythe nods, and the class goes off without a hitch. It's his turn to approach Forsythe, after, and he swings an arm around his shoulders, tugs him close. How it makes his skin crawl, the contact. 

"What?" So hostile, all of the sudden. For a moment, something curls inside Bret's chest. 

"Some friends and I are having this party at some kind of club over in your town," he says, keeping the other close. Maybe he feels a try to escape, he doesn't listen. "You want in?" For a moment, they stare at each other. The skin on Bret's cheeks feels stretched too tight, like plastic. 

"Sure." Bret lets go. 

He tells them. He tells them he found the one. He tells them to spread the word of a party in whatever club they can find in Riverdale, and they find one, under some grotesque picture perfect Americana diner. He tells them to watch. 

Donna asks him, _Why him?_ Bret says, _Because_. Bret doesn't say, _I wish I'd poked my eyes out before ever seeing him_. 

He's chatting with the owner of this club. Pretty. Dark haired, dark eyed, small. He could take her back to his dorm. He could take her into his car. They could.

He wants but he doesn't want, and he hates it. Maybe what he wants is to grab her by her dark pretty hair and dash her head against the wall. Instead, he charms and flirts and thinks about maybe he can get his dick sucked. 

"Veronica?" Forsythe has been nigh impossible to find all night, at least for him **_(_** but Bret has only been looking as a clinical observer, he seeks to study he doesn't search for its own sake he doesn't he doesn't **_)_** and yet. The pretty dark haired piece turns, and he can feel the surprise radiating off of her. 

"Jughead?" It comes to him. 

This is the Veronica that captures his attention so, the one he can't shake away even as he kisses another girl. 

Bret's spent many nights since the invitation up, staring at his ceiling, thinking of who could get in his way, and so often his mind has landed on the girlfriend, the Ponytail, she's sugar sweet and her blood runs thick with the soul of a killer, she could be a danger. But Forsythe looks at this other one with something else, something more, something that feels all encompassing, and Ponytail isn't the threat. 

Not after all. 

Donna tells him, _You're acting like a man possessed_. Donna tells him, _We'll do what we have to do but we need to plan_. Bret tries not to say, _I want it now I want to do it now._ It's not his call to make. 

He nabbed some whiskey from Veronica Lodge's club back in that stupid town. It burns like fire. One night, he leaves Donna with bruises and it feels so good. He starts jerking off every morning in the shower. He dreams about the hunt, the kill. He wakes up wishing his hands were covered in blood. 

Bret can't find a middle ground in class. Some days he's conciliatory, bordering on kind, tries to offer genuine critique. Some days all he does is tear and tear and tear and he wants it to tear at Forsythe too. But it's the same as that first day. The same folded arms, the same smirk, the same infernal beanie. God Bret wants to rip that beanie off his head and. 

And what? A voice in his head taunts him. It sounds like his father. It sounds like Donna. It sounds like Forsythe. 

What, Bret? What do you want to do? 

When they leave he makes sure to ram into Forsythe hard enough to send him sprawling. He hopes it hurt when he fell. The next day, Bret invites him to a book club meeting. 

Donna calls him stupid for it. _The point, Bret, is that we're trying to fucking trap him. You just don't get it._

Bret doesn't hit her. His father always said, it's rude to hit a girl. You should never do it. Bret follows his father's example. He grabs Donna by the throat and tells her to get off him, that he's doing what needs to be done and doesn't she remember that he's done this before, he knows exactly how to make it work. 

Donna wears a scarf to class the next day. Bret gives Forsythe the time and place. 

Ponytail shows up sometimes. They're sickly sweet together. He hates it. He flirts a bit with her, but spends most of his time hanging in the doorway talking to Forsythe, playing the jovial friend, the one who wants to see him included and participate in school life. He even makes jokes about the upcoming football game. On her fifth visit, Bret sees Ponytail kiss him goodbye. 

He imagines that it's him, that he's the one bending down, that he has a hand on her shoulder, that he's the one with the hair Forsythe winds his hands in and pulls-

Bret walks away. He remembers something Donna told him. It takes time, he's in the men's room for over and hour, but finally his fingers hit something and he focuses on that image he had, of him not with an actual girl but with some lowlife snake scum trash, and he vomits up the contents of his breakfast. 

Forsythe doesn't bring Ponytail to the meeting. Bret had told him he could bring someone, and Forsythe brings Veronica. No one asks questions, and Veronica says offhandedly that they're friends and she was already at the school to bring him back a book. 

Sure. Whatever. He doesn't care. 

They play Never Have I Ever. He and Donna ask most of the questions, they observe, Jonathan and Joan falling neatly in line and Forsythe and Veronica being their own wild cards. Sometimes Forsythe looks at her so fondly and he wants to push her out the window. 

At the end of the night, several sips of contraband alcohol later, they leave. Bret and Donna look at each other and formally decide that they're all going to kill him. 

On Tuesday, Bret asks him to proofread their latest assignment. On Wednesday, Bret tells two of his friends to turn his face to pulp and watches in the hallway, makes sure Forsythe sees his blatant refusal to offer any assistance. On Thursday, Bret lends him his first edition of Huck Finn and salivates over the bruises. 

He just wants Forsythe to fucking react. 

It's odd. No matter what he does, Forsythe doesn't seem to swing any emotional extremes. Bret tells himself it's a game, that's why he's doing this, to make him react. React. React! React! 

It's an obsession. He wants to see Forsythe, see Forsythe. Acknowledge him. Appreciate him. Be impressed by him. 

It's just a game. It's an obsession. It's just a game. It's an obsession. Bret goes to the gym and beats the punching bag, gloveless, until his knuckles are bloody. He bandages them on his own, and has lunch with Marmaduke Mason. 

Later, he finds some sophomore girl, bites her lips until they bleed, shoves her face first into the pillows and lets himself be violent and the sounds he thinks he hears tell him all he needs to know about what his dick does to her but it's doing nothing for him, it does nothing for him. 

For a moment, he sees that beanie behind his closed eyelids and something along the base of his spine _stirs_.

"You want in, Marmaduke?" Bret leans against the doorway to his room - The Room - and merrily waves a joint. It takes a bit of cajoling, but Marmaduke agrees. Which is excellent. Word on the street is a little weed makes him Sleeping fucking Beauty for hours. 

Bret roves, looks around, pours over every nook and cranny. Forsythe is back in his backwater town, hanging with his girlfriend and mooning over her friend, so he has nothing but time. 

He wishes the beanie were here. He wants the beanie, he wants to, wants to, wants to. He doesn't know, but it's not here. 

Bret takes one of the shirts. Those infernal S shirts that aren't regulation and he hates them, he hates them but he takes it and shoves it deep into one of his drawers back into his room and stumbles onto his bed, hating himself. 

They keep inviting Forsythe to the meetings, and he keeps on bringing Veronica. They drink and play different games every time. Tonight is truth or dare. They truth and they dare and Bret pokes and prods and pokes some more, Forsythe actually showing some irritation, some defensiveness, Veronica watching it all with her dark, dark eyes. 

It's Joan who does it, and when Bret gets her alone he will rip her hair out at the roots for doing it but she does it. "I dare Jones to kiss Bret." 

Donna bursts into peals of laughter, like this is the greatest joke. Veronica widens her eyes and shares a glance with Forsythe, who shrugs and leans forward. Bret downs the rest of his drink in one go, it burns. 

They kiss. It feels odd. A boy's lips, a kiss just for the sake of kissing, and Forsythe opens his mouth and Bret is telling himself not to, not to, not to because he shouldn't because that's not what he does because he's not into this except that he is. 

It's a real kiss, and when it's over Forsythe wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and Bret pours himself a full glass of scotch and chugs it until there's not a drop left. 

He cries that night. They're trying to do this to a kid, they're all just kids. But he hates him, he hates this Forsythe Pendleton the Third, Jughead Jones. He hates that he ever came to this school, that he thought he had the right. That he was good enough, worthy enough. He's trailer park trash, white trash, pond scum, dirt on their shoes. He doesn't belong here. He shouldn't have come here and ruined everything and Bret hates him for it. 

Forsythe had the nerve to think he was allowed here, in their world, amongst them, and he fucked everything up because of it. He deserves what's coming for him. 

Sometimes, at night, he thinks about it. In between the planning, in between his mercurial days, when he's alone and almost asleep and he can tell himself in the morning that he doesn't really mean it, that his mind is playing tricks on him, he thinks about it. He thinks about what it would feel like to have Forsythe kiss him again, to have Forsythe strip him bare and lay him out and do what he wants. 

There's darkness behind those immutable eyes, something that could cusp on terrifying. Whatever that is, it could bruise Bret's face, shove himself inside him with no care for his pain, hurt him until he comes. 

And every time, he resists the urge to claw his own eyes. 

Ponytail still comes around, still preens like she's something special. Bret thinks he hates her more than Veronica. The smugness of it, how self assured she is. That Forsythe is her's and nothing can change that. She kisses him with a sense of ownership, like he's her property, like he belongs to her and only her, from now until the end of time. 

He tells Donna there's a new addition to the plan, and she grins like he's given her Christmas come early. 

They keep up their dances and wait for the right time. Bret craves and tells himself not to, he acts and reacts and acts and reacts some more. He finds a satisfaction in how it's getting to Forsythe. The bags under his eyes are darker, he looks more exhausted. How he must run himself ragged, writing and studying and trying to figure them out and playing into their schemes. 

Bret fantasizes and thinks and plots and imagines and waits. They're waiting and waiting, in this terrible limbo, it comes to a head the week of the Ides of March. 

Poetic. And Bret, Brutus, they're so similar. 

It's Bret who gets the proof. It's late and he's wandering around, trying to find a safe spot to light a joint and let himself unwind and forget about Forsythe. Except that he finds this spot in the old building, the one that's mostly used for storage now, and he doesn't see but he hears. 

He hears _her_ , harsh and breathy and desperate and he hears _him_ , he _hears it_. There's a thousand nooks and crannies here and Bret doesn't seek them out, not tonight, but he hears and he can picture it, in all its sordid, literary depravity, and he's so hard as he smokes and waits for them to finish and leave and prays they don't spot him. 

Damaged Forsythe is stepping out on his perfect girlfriend with her damaged best friend. It's so perfect Bret almost wants to write it down. 

It's a gift. Bret has all the excuse he needs to follow Forsythe around, night and day and then some, keep his eyes trained on him. He takes pictures of him with Veronica. The two of them talking on the grounds, the two of them kissing in a stair well, the two of them sneaking into the old building, the two of them stripping in the moonlight, the two of them fucking rough and desperate and like their lives depend on it, needing not to get caught and needing it to last. Bret documents it all, he photographs and videos and audio records and compiles all of it. 

He keeps some pictures of himself. Some of the two of them and some just of Forsythe, on his own. In various stages of undress. Writing. Without his beanie. Just being. These are the ones he deletes after he develops, erases the digital trail and hoards for himself. 

The next time Ponytail comes over to visit her boyfriend, Donna steals her phone. She never even notices it's gone. 

They hold an Ides of March party. They invite everyone and tell them to invite everyone they know, Forsythe included. 

"It'll be a great bash," Bret says gleefully, slapping a hand on Forsythe's back. "Come on bud, let loose for a night. Just have some fucking fun." Forsythe shrugs him off, and Bret feels goosebumps on his flesh. 

"Sure man," he tells him. "Whatever." 

That night, Bret sends a file to Ponytail's phone, still sitting comfortably on Donna's bedside table. 

It's so simple. The party is packed, out in the woods, everyone's drunk and no one's keeping an eye on anyone else. It's so easy for Joan to tell Forsythe he saw Veronica, drunk as anything, stumbling and being led away by Bret himself. Forsythe dashes off to the rescue. 

It's so easy for Donna to tell Ponytail that they need to talk in private, that it's important, that it's about Forsythe and it might jeopardize his place at this school. Betty follows dutifully. 

Donna blows right in her face, right on cue, and slips the phone back into her jacket pocket. And she leads her through the woods, just as Bret sneaks up behind Forsythe and Joan and bashes a rock into his head. Forsythe falls, heavy as the stone that felled him, onto the forest floor. Bret, on impulse, tears the beanie off and pockets it. Donna leads Ponytail over to Forsythe's prone form. Bret hands her the rock. 

"Now Betty." Her voice is smooth like silk. "Just drop it." 

She drops it. There's a sickening crunch and spatter and blood seeps onto the dirt, out of the hole in Forsythe's head. The drugs will wear off soon, and there's one more piece. Donna and Joan dash off to inform the worried redhead and Veronica, safe back at the party, that they might have seen Forsythe and Ponytail head off into the forest. 

Ponytail's still out of it. The beanie burns a hole in Bret's pocket as he leans down, hears no breath, and placed a biting kiss on Forsythe's cooling lips. 

Jonathan is the final piece. It's Jonathan who watches them desperately attempt to revive Forsythe, try and figure out Ponytail did to him with her bloodied hands and inability to remember and dead boyfriend, and then clumsily hide the body and try to wash off the evidence. He watches and waits until they're gone and races back to the party, stumbles into the clearing babbling and screaming, 

"Something-Jughead-I found Jughead, he-he!" He's in convincing hysterics and the juniors he ran into yell for someone to call the cops. Bret watches and feels that stirring at the base of his spine, a pleasure pain that only increases as Forsythe's sheriff father discovers the brutalized corpse of his son. 

It all falls into place without them ever lifting another finger. The pictures on Ponytail's phone, the way she and her friends were unaccounted for, and after seeing them, the others are quick to turn on her and accuse her of revenge. It adds up perfectly, and Bret has to shove a hand in his pants back at Stonewall as they play footage of Ponytail's arrest. 

Forsythe is buried without fanfare, and he's pulled off the perfect murder. 

The summer after, Bret takes a vacation in New York and calls a service. He tells the man, _Your name is Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third. And you want to hurt me_. He despises how good it feels. 

And when he goes to his new school in Riverdale, he asks out Veronica Lodge the same day Ponytail gets sentenced for Forsythe's murder. 

When he kisses her he tastes Forsythe, when he covers her pretty mouth and fucks her into the seats of her fancy car he thinks of Forsythe, he thinks he can feel Forsythe. It's the best sex he's had in so long, and he wants to do it all night long until neither of them can take it anymore.

The shirt and the bloodied beanie, both never washed, lie tucked safely away in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. 


End file.
